Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his

writing, though his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to be

written in an unknown character. There are answers which, in turning

away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a

discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own

side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

Dorothea left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband's

writing-table and went to her own place, the scorn and indignation

within her rejecting the reading of these letters, just as we hurl away

any trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of mean

cupidity. She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of her

husband's bad temper about these letters: she only knew that they had

caused him to offend her. She began to work at once, and her hand did

not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had

been given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her

letters beautifully, and it seemed to her that she saw the construction

of the Latin she was copying, and which she was beginning to

understand, more clearly than usual. In her indignation there was a

sense of superiority, but it went out for the present in firmness of

stroke, and did not compress itself into an inward articulate voice

pronouncing the once "affable archangel" a poor creature.

There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had

not looked away from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a

book on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library

steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress. She

started up and bounded towards him in an instant: he was evidently in

great straits for breath. Jumping on a stool she got close to his

elbow and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm--

"Can you lean on me, dear?"

He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her,

unable to speak or move, gasping for breath. When at last he descended

the three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea had

drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed

helpless and about to faint. Dorothea rang the bell violently, and

presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, and

was gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been met

in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had "had a fit in the

library."




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